Category: Common Problems ¤
  Author: Susan Bacig ¤
   Title: Dog Aggression ¤

I wanted to send this privately to Pauline, but I couldn't find her original
post for the address, so please forgive me.

I have spent almost a year working with my 4-year old rescue and his dog
aggression. It has been a long, long haul, but we're coming out of finally.
When I got him, my vet and at least one of my instructors questioned my
sanity for adopting him. A year later, he recently attended his first fun
match without even glancing* at another dog. Here's what I did, and I have to
warn you I got a lot of flak from some of the other members in my training
club:

We started out with great distance between my dog and others. I started out
with having him sit until the other dog went out of sight. As we got closer
to other dogs later in the training, I would do circle lefts with him until I
got his attention, and then I had him sit. As he got better, we would arrange
to meet dogs, and we would do a series of sits and downs on the way over to
the dog. If he lost control, the other dog would leave. If he kept his cool,
he would eventually be allowed to meet the dog with a loose leash. Never were
any negative words or actions used. This bothered other people, ad some even
scolded him themselves. It was embarrassing, but I figured it was a natural
consequence and just suffered through it. One of those people recently looked
at my dog and said, "You're getting more angelic all the time!"

Then we went to fun matches, and just hung out in the parking lot. Then he
went in to perform, but he was kept in the car when he was not "up". Then he
was crated at the match. I discovered there was a limit to his patience in
this environment, so we slowly built up his tolerance based on the chaos of
any particular match. He always had to stay through sits and downs, though.
Lots* of attention and +R paid to him when he was being good. 

The clicker eventually just threw him out of aggressive-mode. And* I got
really good at keeping constantly aware of what he was doing and where he was
looking. People would berate me for not reprimanding my dog, but I figured
that would only make him associate my reprimand with the other dog. I wanted
him to think that seeing another dog meant great things. Eventually I would
ask, "Where's the puppy?" And he would look for a dog. When he saw one, he
came back for his treat. After all is said and done, my sole criteria for my
next dog is that he would not be naturally dog-aggressive. But this one is at
least easier to live with now.

I also used a gentle leader throughout this process so I could control him
without giving him the idea he may be able to overpower me (He's a big boy!).

Some other things I did that I'm not sure helped:
I lowered the protein content of his food. I had him neutered. I did the
TTouch on him. When he met other dogs, I had the other owners click and treat
him. I had friends with submissive dogs come over to play. After I was solid
with him in Obedience classes, I took him back down the rung for day, because
the less controlled the group was the more aggressive he would try to become.
I still need to do more of that, because he'll lose it in the beginning.

It is a really* hard battle you have ahead of you, but don't give up! Use
your obedience training as a rock foundation to build on. And try to
determine if the dog feels unsafe--I know mine did. If he's afraid, you can
do a lot by keeping him safe and showing him you are able to. It's why so
many aggressive dogs behave so well in the ring during sits and downs: they
know they're safe. All my best wishes.

Susan Bacig
SBacialupo@AOL.COM


From SBacialupo@aol.comTue Apr 29 14:16:25 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 10:47:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Aggression postscript


've gotten some mail from other people struggling with this, too. I
remembered something else we did and thought I should post my reply to the
list also:

One thing I forgot to write in the post that was really* helpful is that if
the owner can find a place to walk her dog where it's really controlled (not
a lot of dogs off leash) she can have her dog sit off the path until the
other dog passes them, then C/T. Have her try to pick a place where there's
not too* much traffic, or she'll be doing sits ever 15 feet. Then she can
teach the command "on-by" which tells him to pass something without paying
much attention. It's different than the "Leave" command which implies that
the dog has already noticed it and has investigated it.

We went to a small lake where it was mostly older people walking older dogs.
We'd run into maybe 3-4 per mile. It was perfect.